


Minimal Loss AU

by WhumpTown



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt Aaron Hotchner, Hurt No Comfort, Not Happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29170671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhumpTown/pseuds/WhumpTown
Summary: prompt: "if this is okay, for the suggest a fic thing, how about an au to minimal loss where hotch sent his agents into the building, but like gideon and adrian bale, they didn't come out again, or if they did, they couldn't be field agents because of the injuries?"
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner & Derek Morgan, Aaron Hotchner & Emily Prentiss, Aaron Hotchner & Spencer Reid, Derek Morgan & Emily Prentiss
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Minimal Loss AU

“He failed his gun qualification." 

Derek Morgan’s head snaps up from where he’s staring at his paperwork. Everyone’s been on edge since the accident but today the air feels unbearably thick. Enough to cut. "Dave, ” he calls to the senior agent’s receding back. “How bad?”

Rossi stops and stands for a moment conjuring the best words to describe the situation. He turns on the heel of a foot, looking over his shoulder he simply shakes his head. But that alone says enough. Dave’s been unwavering with support. Strong. The only level head in the face of everything and now he’s communicating that it’s pointless. 

Things can never go back to the way that they were before.

Before the explosion.

_Aaron Hotchner’s scream is swallowed by the crack that shakes the world._

_By the bomb that upsets his entire life._

_He surges forward. That’s what his training has taught him, what his life has prepared him for. To keep moving forward regardless of what waits ahead. To move into the danger. Besides, his team is in there. His family and he’s– he’s got to get in there. He has to– Arms snag his waist and he knows just from the way that he’s stopped in his tracks who it is. “Derek,” he barks the other man’s name out like an order and it is._

_Except he isn’t released. He becomes increasingly desperate and he comes free only because irrational rarely loses to logic. This time, the earth splits and Derek Morgan’s shout pulls them all down. His voice cracks and he watches his boss’ receding back._

_What are they to do?_

_Nothing. Except follow._

_Dave’s voice sounds through the chaos but Derek is deaf to the orders. All he can do is stand and stare in shock as Hotch runs into the scene. As he breaks protocols and puts himself in danger._

_Derek Morgan hadn’t been there when Adrian Bale bested Gideon and killed their team. Aaron had been. He’d been preparing the trail the first team in, leading more local police into the scene. Hotch had spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from the shrapnel wounds embedded in his upper torso. The fact that he had only nearly died set him apart from the others. So he never complained because it could have been worse._

_So much worse._

_“No–” Derek sees the first responders collect his boss. Forming a line between the distraught unit chief and the men and women trying to do their job._

_“No!” Hotch’s voice is a frustrated strangled sound. He’s bigger than the line of people. Desperation forms an all-new type of strength and breaks through the line. The smoke and scent of carnage punch him in the gut._

_Failure._

_God… Good Lord this is what failure smells like._

_“Hotch!"_

Too much has happened in such a short amount of time. 

"You okay, man?” Morgan meets Hotch at the elevator. He knows where the older man is headed. He’s become easily predictable. 

Hotch doesn’t so much as blink in response. 

Morgan wants to be pissed. He wants to flip the desk and punch a wall. He needs to do something because they just keep losing. They can’t seem to win. And, as much as he can understand, he can’t comprehend how unwilling to fight Hotch is. How hard is it to pass a gun qualification? The man is a god-damned sharpshooter. One of the best and he can’t even… He can’t do this one thing.

It’s not even hard.

They stop in the hall and Morgan refuses to look. He can’t but he still knows what he’ll find: his best friend’s faces memorialized behind glass, smiling for the rest of eternity. 

They found Emily in the hall. She’d been holding the body of another woman to her chest, pulling them both to what she thought was safety. The other man was dead, from what they can tell, but Emily refused to leave her behind. She was three feet from the exit when Cryus blew the compound up. Three fucking feet. 

Somehow, it had been smoke inhalation that did her in. Her legs broken beneath the debris that fell onto her body and yet, she’d laid on her back for three hours before she met her death. She was savable. They could have saved her. Instead, she died in a cult leader’s basement trapped under debris all alone. 

Spencer had gone quickly. Immediate. 

There was blood pooling on his lips as he’d smiled at Cyrus. His death had looked like defiance and he knew that as the hammer of the gun struck, Hotch would have been proud. It took balls to argue with Cyrus. To back the leader into a biblical corner but his words had struck a new rebellion: doubt. 

Cyrus had leveled his Glock to Ried’s temples and torn his genius brain to shreds. 

But Reid had never known strength as he did in that moment.

The bomb didn’t even leave them a body to bury. 

Morgan can’t even look at their pictures.

“Cyrus killed them,” Morgan reminds Hotch gently. This has nothing to do with Hotch or his orders. This is about an unhinged cult leader and a bomb. This wasn’t Gideon and Adrain Bale. There was no way for Hotch to know. He had done what any of them would have: the job. That’s what Reid and Prentiss were doing that day. 

The day the earth stood still.

At night, Morgan wakes with cold sweat soaking his back. All he can hear is Hotch’s broken shout for Prentiss and Reid. The only time he’s ever heard the other man so desperate.

_Morgan steps around debris, lowering his head in defeat at the way the emergency personal look at him. This isn’t shame… it’s Derek Morgan realizing he has no idea what to do. No idea what he’s supposed to say. Because there is nothing he can conceive to make this better. To give this moment a commodity of normalcy._

_In the middle of it all– a sea of black body bags, each one measuring out their failure– Hotch is crouched on the ground. In his arms… Emily._

_“Man…” Morgan had fallen to his knees right beside his boss. His oldest friend. “She’s gone,” he manages because that’s what the emergency crew had told him. What they kept saying as they explained that someone needed to come to get Hotch so they could take her away._

_Morgan can’t– Emily had always been so pale. Her dark hair and dark eyes had all been so striking to her pale beauty but he’s never seen her so still. A broken doll in Hotch’s arms._

_“We have to go,” Morgan says and he’s not sure he can do much more than repeating the words that other people have been repeating to him. He’s incapable of thinking past just how broken Emily is. He’d just spoken to her. The flashing light and her boot in the window._

_Hotch tears his eyes away and up to Morgan. There are tear streaks on his dirty face, “I can’t.” He looks back down at Emily and holds her closer. Daring Morgan to take her away. “She–” the words get caught in his throat. “She didn’t think I trusted her.”_

_Morgan shakes his head but… it’s true._

_“I do,” Hotch says. His chest heaves as he pulls in a broken sob. “I trust her.”_

_Morgan nods his understanding and places a hand on Hotch’s shoulder. “She knows,” he promises. “She knows, man.”_

That day claimed more than it ever gave. 

They lost Reid and Prentiss. 

Hotch had been torn by his inability to be a palberrier but he’s been unable to stop the tremble in his hands since that bomb went off. His grip was too weak.

“Dave told me you failed your gun qualification,” Morgan says softly. Slowly, he raises his eyes until he’s at Reid. He’s never going to turn thirty. Never going to fall in love. 

Hotch doesn’t say anything which shouldn’t be as surprising as it is. He doesn’t talk too much anymore. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Morgan scratches at the back of his head. “You don’t need to go out in the field.” Hotch shouldn’t be anywhere near the field. Not for a long time. Morgan can’t take another Gideon. He can’t watch another friend unravel. He’s tired of losing people. 

He accidentally looks at Emily and feels the wind get knocked from his lungs. Clenching his teeth, Morgan forces himself to breathe steadily. Forcing the image of Emily’s still body in Hotch’s arms as far from his mind as he can. “Come on,” Morgan says, knowing that Hotch will follow. 

His hands tucked in his pockets, hiding their intense tremble, Hotch mindlessly follows. That’s all he’s really capable of these days. His hands tremble. His eyes scan. He stays silent, broken. 

“We’ll be okay,” Morgan tells him, as he holds the bull-pens door open. Morgan just needs to work on convincing himself that as much as Hotch. 

They’re never okay.


End file.
